AFTER 20 YEARS of making feature films, Bernardo Bertolucci should know better. The writer and director of such controversial, often ponderous works as Last Tango in Paris and 1900 attempts, with The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, to return to the earlier sparse style which marked his powerful 1969 film The Spider's Strategem. Unfortunately, Bertolucci's recent film cannot match such earlier efforts, and its attempt to study paradox and ambiguity flounders in a self-conscious plot which even the wonderful lead actor and fine cinematography cannot salvage.

The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man opens on Primo (Ugo Tognazzi), a hard-working salt-of-the-earth type who has realized the capitalist dream in the form of his own cheese factory outside Parma in northern Italy. The first hint of conflict s straightforward and understandable enough: Primo's leftist-leaning only child Giovanni (Riki Tognazzi) presents him with a birthday gift of a flare-gun and binoculars, accompanied by a note deriding Primo's latest purchase, a yacht Visibly stung by the rebuke, Primo ascends to his factory's roof to survey his domain. In the distance he sees Giovanni's red sports car being forced off the road and the boy bundled into the pursuer's car. Is this a kidnapping or just Giovanni's attempt to extort funds from his wealthy father?

As ransom requests appear, brought by a previously unknown woman who identifies herself as "Giovanni's girl," the case grows more complex--as it should, but the plot, instead of thickening, becomes distressingly obtuse. Young workers approach Primo with furtive suggestions, their role as friends or captors remains unclear, not only to him but to the viewer as well The labyrinth never opens onto a clear space, and the ambiguities and doublecrosses are doubly frustrating because they are so obviously intentional. Too simplistic to captivate without a fitting denouement, the unsolved mystery fails equally much as a pure intellectual exercise

Warm, human Primo provides the one bright spot in this flawed drama Best known to American audiences for his lead role in La Cage Aux Folles unshaven Ugo Tognazzi in baggy corduroys portrays Primo's working class origins as sensual and simple Primo imbodies an earthiness once quieter and more passionate than the mysteria of his aging but staff beautiful wife Barbara (Anoak Ainee)

By marrying this golden girl of leisure Primo has acheived the apex of a working-class dreams he is ripe to be cut down. Bertolucci humbles his but is unable to create a tragic hero out of him, for Primo learns nothing, having known all along that he is slightly ridiculous. From his vantage point at the film's outset--living in an expensive villa modeled after the local medieval fortress--he realizes fully that his social status is out of proportion with hsi real needs. Still, no matter how ludicrous his self-image of the little man thrust into power. Primo feels no shame for his materialistic desires until circumstances force him to choose between the good life and his son Modest from the first, he has little distance to fall.

UNFORTUNATELY, this three-dimensional hero wanders through a world of deceit where characters, unable to reveal themselves, become two-dimensional, walking enigmas. The role of Laura, the beautiful go-between, demands a constant aura of intensity from actress Laura Morante. But the part written as a never-relaxing alternation between grief and sexual passion, vctimizes her with its unplayability. Victor Cavallo as Adelfo, the worker-priest who feeds the pigs, also suffers from the flat script, which forces him to stay calm and distanced, his religious acceptance erecting a rigid, unbroken stoicism to block him from the audience. With such starkness, Bertolucci may be striving to create a modern morality play, but he has certainly not drawn real human beings

The movie's stronger elements fail too to counteract the weakness of characters and plot The camera with in The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man emerges as surprisingly playful as Carlo Di Palma's lens follows Primo's bicycle through a car windshield and later lingers on the ham-eating lips of the wealthy. The ideas, it seems, is to play with the viewer's perceptions of really, making him connection through cinematography of his own limited vision But where the plot should continue this theme and reinforce it, confusion wells up instead. Cancelling any possible effectiveness.

As if ultimately unsatisfied with the parable of wealth, family and a man who must face his own trivial life. Bertolucci concludes the work on a religious note--but again be fails to integrate, slapping on symbolism like an applique. Barefoot, the son reborn dances with the workers in an episode stylistically unrelated to the rest of the movie. Primo arrives at no revelation, achieves no redemption from his farcical life. He exists calling for more champagne, as bewildered as the audience.